By Kolawole Ojebisi
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has yielded to the demand of members of House of Representatives to upgrade the national honour conferred on its speaker, Tajudeen Abbas.
This is coming forty-eight hours after lawmakers in the lower chamber pointed out a disparity in the national honours conferred on the leaders of the two chambers constituting the National Assembly of the Federation.
In his 64th Independence Anniversary Speech on October 1, Tinubu had conferred the Commander of the Federal Republic( CFR) on the speaker and the deputy senate president while Senator Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President, was conferred the Grand Commander of the Order of Niger (GCON)
But this development led to a debate in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, calling on the President to confer a higher honour on the Speaker.
However, in a statement on Friday, Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, said Tinubu was persuaded by the House of Representatives position and has decided to remedy what he termed “historical error and oversight”.
“Thus, he has decided to upgrade the Speaker to GCON from CFR, in accordance with the National Order of Precedence.
“The speaker, the Senate President, other principal officers of the National Assembly and the Chief Justice of Nigeria will be formally decorated with their new honours later.”
With his development, Tajudeen Abbas will go down in Nigeria’s history as the first speaker of be conferred with the second highest national honour.
The House of Representatives has 360 members while the Senate has 109, meaning the green chamber has numerical strength over the red chamber.
Part of the grouse of the house of representatives on Wednesday included the way people referred to it as “lower chamber” a nomenclature the members termed as misnomer.
